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Middle Eastern Studies: A Review of the State of the Field with a Few Examples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Manfred Halpern
Manfred Halpern
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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World Politics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , October 1962 , pp. 108 - 122
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1962

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References

* This figure is based on a survey, “Undergraduate Instruction on the Middle East in American Colleges and Universities,” conducted by J. C. Hurewitz in behalf of the American Association for Middle Eastern Studies, New York, May 1, 1962.

1 American Council of Learned Societies, A Program for Near Eastern Studies in the United States (Washington 1949), 8.Google Scholar

2 “XXI s“ezd CPSU i zadachi vostokovedeniya” [The XXI Congress of the CPSU and the Tasks of Oriental Studies], Problemy Vostokovedeniya, No. 1 (1959), 18–25.

For an account of Soviet Oriental studies, see Lambton, Ann K. S., ed., Islam and Russia: A Detailed Analysis of “An Outline of the History of Islamic Studies in the US.S.R.” by N. A. Smirnov (London 1956).Google Scholar Also four “Selective Bibliographies” of Russian materials on Arabs and Arab Countries, Islam and Islamic Institutions, Turkey, and Africa, all by Rudolf Loewenthal, Institute of Languages and Linguistics, George town University (Washington 1958). Laqueur, W. Z., “The Shifting Line in Soviet Orientology,” Problems of Communism, V, No. 2 (March–April 1956), 20–26.Google Scholar

3 Among them, Speiser, E. A., The United States and the Near East (rev. ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1959)Google Scholar; Hurewitz, J. C., Middle East Dilemmas (New York 1953)Google Scholar; Thomas, Lewis V. and Frye, Richard N., The United States and Turkey and Iran (Cambridge, Mass., 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoskins, Halford L., The Middle East: Problem Area in World Politics (New York 1954)Google Scholar; Lenczowski, George, The Middle East in World Affairs (2nd ed., Ithaca 1956).Google Scholar An increasing concern with the impact of internal affairs on international relations is apparent in a later book, Campbell's, John C.Defense of the Middle East (2nd ed., New York 1960).Google Scholar

4 Cameron, George G., in Social Forces in the Near East, ed. by Fisher, Sydney N. (Ithaca 1955), xiv.Google Scholar In presenting this volume, the editor adds that in die past 150 years more than 40,000 books on the subject of the Middle East have appeared in Western languages. In terms of the larger area under consideration here, the number is probably closer to 60,000.

5 None of the assessments made by these committees, which were under the general chairmanship of T. Cuyler Young, have been published, but the causes of discontent and proposals for a change of course are highlighted, for the social sciences, by Rustow's, Dankwart A.Politics and Westernization in the Near East, Center of International Studies, Princeton University (Princeton 1956)Google Scholar; and, for history, by Gibb's, H. A. R. “Problems of Modern Middle Eastern History,” Report on Current Research, Middle East Institute (Washington, Spring 1956), 1–7.Google Scholar

6 It would be quite impossible for students of political modernization to do any sensible work without, for example, drawing upon the works of H. A. R. Gibb, Gustave von Grunebaum, or Wilfred Cantwell Smith, to mention only scholars in the humanities now on this continent.

7 In addition to those discussed elsewhere in this article, but ignoring others covering earlier periods or more limited aspects, the following deserve to be mentioned: Upton, Joseph M., The History of Modern Iran: An Interpretation (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar; Banani, Amin, The Modernization of Iran, 1921–1941 (Stanford 1961)Google Scholar; Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, Modern Islam in India (London 1946)Google Scholar; Callard, Keith, Pakistan: A Political Study (London 1957)Google Scholar; Fraser-Tytler, W. K., Afghanistan: A Study of Political Developments in Central Asia (London 1950)Google Scholar; Khadduri, Majid, Independent Iraq (2nd ed., London 1960)Google Scholar; Longrigg, Stephen H., Iraq, 1900–1950: A Political, Social and Economic History (London 1953)Google Scholar; John Philby, H. St., Sau'di Arabia (London 1955)Google Scholar; Shwadran, Benjamin, Jordan: A State of Tension (New York 1959)Google Scholar; Longrigg, Stephen H., Syria and the Lebanon Under French Mandate (London 1958)Google Scholar; Hourani, A. H., Syria and Lebanon (London 1946)Google Scholar; Ziadeh, Nicola, Syria and Lebanon (New York 1957)Google Scholar; Issawi, Charles, Egypt at Mid-Century: An Economic Survey (New York 1954)Google Scholar; Wheelock, Keith, Nasser's New Egypt (New York 1960)Google Scholar; Colombe, Marcel, L'Evolution de l'Egypte, 1924–1950 (Paris 1951)Google Scholar; Little, Tom, Egypt (London 1959)Google Scholar; Lewis, Geoffrey L., Turkey (New York 1955)Google Scholar; Karpat, Kemal H., Turkey's Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Party System (Princeton 1959)Google Scholar; Ashford, Douglas E., Political Change in Morocco (Princeton 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Four regional studies dealing with the course of modernization are particularly worthwhile: Wilfred Smith, Cantwell, Modern Islam in History (Princeton 1957)Google Scholar; Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe, Ill., 1958)Google Scholar; Berger, Morroe, The Arab World Today (New York 1962)Google Scholar; and a lucid, fair, and well-wrought textbook by Sharabi, Hisham, Governments and Politics of the Middle East (Princeton 1962).Google Scholar

8 Kohn's, studies included Geschichte der Nationalen Bewegung im Orient (Berlin 1928; London 1929)Google Scholar and Nationalisms und Imperialisms im Vorderen Orient (Frankfurt 1931; London 1932). Among later studies, one might select Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening (New York 1946)Google Scholar; Zeine, Zeine N., Arab-Turkish Relations and the Emergence of Arab Nationalism (Beirut 1958)Google Scholar and The Struggle for Arab Independence (Beirut 1960); Nuseibeh, Hazem Zaki, The Ideas of Arab Nationalism (Ithaca 1956)Google Scholar; Heyd, Uriel, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp (London 1950)Google Scholar; Steppat, Fritz, Nationalisms und Islam bei Mustafa Kamil (Leiden 1956).Google Scholar A valuable bibliography in this field is Qubain's, Fahim I.Inside the Arab Mind (Washington 1960).Google Scholar

9 However, an excellent book by Ahmed, Jamal Mohammed, The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (London 1960)Google Scholar, concentrates on a more limited period, primarily the first two decades of this century.

10 The reader interested in the political role of the army in the Middle East may, however, find the following works useful: Majid Khadduri, “The Army Officer: His Role in Middle Eastern Politics,” in Fisher, ed., 162–83; Berger, Morroe, Military Elite and Social Change: Egypt Since Napoleon, Research Monograph No. 6, Center of International Studies, Princeton University (Princeton 1960)Google Scholar; Johnson, John J., ed., The Role of the Military in Underdeveloped Countries (Princeton 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and a volume on The Military in Middle Eastern Society and Politics, edited by Sydney N. Fisher, to be published by Ohio State University Press.

11 al-Nasser, Gamal abd, Egypt's Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution (Washington 1955), 17.Google Scholar

12 Smith, , Islam in Modern History, III.Google ScholarCragg, Kenneth writes in a similar vein in “The Modernist Movement in Egypt,” in Frye, Richard N., ed., Islam and the West (The Hague 1957)Google Scholar, which contains a number of valuable reassessments made during a conference at Harvard. He says: “Islam has always believed that the individual, not the community, is the source of ‘heresy.’ It is a corollary of this that social changes, not intellectual enterprise, must be the proper origin of religious redefinition” (p. 160).

13 In the study of Islamic law, there has been a tendency to follow the traditional Moslem method of commenting on the law without relating it explicitly to actual social or political behavior. A number of Western Orientalists have made a major contribution, in contrast to tradition-bound Moslems, by critically examining the historical development of Islamic law; but, even so, the historical context in which law had to be practiced (or in which custom and political expediency took the place of law) has seldom received equal attention. Such contextual rather than merely textual analysis is evident, however, in the work of the contributors to Law in the Middle East, 1 (Washington 1955), edited by Majid Khadduri and Herbert J. Liebesny. 14 How much we do not know about this latter period is set forth with great precision in the Introduction to Gibb, H. A. R. and Brown, Harold, Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East (London 1950), 1, Part 1, 1–18.Google Scholar

15 Lewis, Bernard, “Islam,” in Sinor, Denis, ed., Orientalism and History (Cambridge, Eng., 1954), 16.Google Scholar For one of the first carefully systematic, conceptual analyses of the origins of Islam, see Montgomery Watt's, W.Islam and the Integration of Society (London 1961).Google Scholar

16 My colleague, Professor Roger Le Tourneau of Princeton and the University of Aix-en-Provence, in a personal communication points up just such a shift in approach and interest among Orientalists in France, involving growing collaboration between scholars of past and present-day Islam. Among the contributors to this trend have been Jacques Berque, Robert Brunschvig, Claude Cahen, Robert Montagne, and Pierre Rondot. For projected developments in Great Britain, see University Grants Committee, Report of the Sub-Committee on Oriental, Slavonic, East European and African Studies (London 1961).Google Scholar

17 Gibb, , “Problems of Modern Middle Eastern History,” 1.Google Scholar If one included some younger men who take a historical view of culture and religions (rather than only a cultured or religious view of history), one could surely increase that number, yet not escape scarcity.

18 Hurewitz, , “Undergraduate Instruction,” 10Google Scholar and passim.

19 The National Undergraduate Program for Overseas Study of Arabic at Shimlan (Lebanon), and improved techniques for teaching Near Eastern languages during the Inter-University Summer Programs and in both undergraduate and graduate schools, may be of considerable assistance in this difficult task.